Cary Clack: Mother struggles with daughter's suicide

Updated 5:22 pm, Monday, March 14, 2011

Second of two parts

Nothing. In the 18 months since Helen Hopson unexpectedly took her life a few days shy of her 23rd birthday, that's what her family finds when they try to retrace her steps, re-live her actions and remember her words for warning signs.

Nothing.

The beloved "golden girl" of her close-knit family, Helen, a Churchill High School graduate and a debutante in Laredo's Colonial Pageant, left only a note saying, "I'm sorry. I love you."

Her mother, Margaret Hopson, an international trade attorney with Jackson Walker L.L.P., says, "It shakes you to your core that someone you love could do this."

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Within minutes of learning of Helen's death, Hopson told her two younger children, "I will never leave you by choice."

Hopson is now dedicating her time to trying to convince those so inclined, especially young people, that suicide must never be a choice. In January, she set a nationwide individual fundraising record with the more that $55,000 she collected in Laredo's Out of the Darkness Walk that she organized to benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. She is now becoming a more frequent visitor to schools where she speaks to students.

If there's one critical message she wants to get across it's the emotional wreckage those who take their own lives leave in their wake.

"I have learned in dealing with suicide awareness and prevention since losing Helen, that sometimes, when a person is depressed and in despair, they may think their family will be better off without them," she says. "I have heard young people say, 'Sure, it will be hard for them at first, but my family will move on and not have to deal with me any more. I am just dragging them down.' The truth is, if the person contemplating taking his or her life takes the despair they are feeling at that moment, multiplies it by the highest factor possible, then multiplies that product by the number of people who love and will miss them, that is the despair they will leave in their wake. Parents, siblings, grandparents and other family and loved ones are condemned to a life sentence of missing and grieving for their absent loved one. You cannot leave your family by leaving this Earth."

She believes her big-hearted daughter didn't think about the consequences of her action.